Adhiban loses to Nakamura, crashes out of chess World Cup

Tromso (Norway): Grandmaster and former national champion B Adhiban bowed out of the chess World Cup after losing his second game on the trot against higher-ranked Hikaru Nakamura of United States in the third round.

Losing the first game as white, Adhiban started the day in a must-win situation but his aspirations suffered setbacks as Nakamura scored another chance-less victory against the Indian.

But Adhiban remained the best-performing Indian in the event as compatriots G Akash and Parimarjan Negi had crashed out in the first round itself against Fabiano Caruana of Italy and Yuri Kryvoruchko of Ukraine.

Krishnan Sasikiran found his nemesis in Sergey Karjakin of Russia in the second round of the 128-player knockout event.

World number two Levon Aronian of Armenia was sent packing too as he could not win in the return game against Evgeny Tomashevski of Russia and lost the two-games mini-match by 0.5-1.5 margin.

Russian Alexander Grischuk however rose from his ashes to square it up against Le Quang Liem of Vietnam. It was a dead-drawn endgame on board which on another day was no problem for Liem.

However, the pressure got to the Vietnamese as he squandered away the chance to be in last 16 and will have to now battle it out in the rapid tiebreaker.

Apart from victories by Grischuk and Nakamura, the day provided just one more decisive game and veteran Peruvian Grandmaster Julio Granda Zuniga benefitted at the expense of Dutchman Anish Giri. Incidentally, Anish had won the first game so this one too goes to the tie-break stage.